120 OUR FAR-FLUNG CORR SPOND NT 5 THé MOUNTAIN OF MIRACLE.S T HE little towns of Lake Como seem to have tumbled down from the mountains above; they lie strewn like pehbles along the shore, bleached by the waves and the strong vlhite sun. They have been there a long time, and have only barely moved over to make way for the age of autos; the narrow highvlay dodges in and out be- tween houses and shops whose doors open straight into the lanes of whizzing traffic. In some places, the road runs below the towns, along the water's edge, and in others above the towns, under sheer stone walls that hold the moun tains back. At first sight, Lenno, on the lake's western shore, lies entirely below the road. You squeeze between two houses, plunge down an incline, turn sharply lakewal d, and there you are, alone, in a bright, blank little piazza between a seventeenth-century church and an ancient octagonal baptistery. If it should happen to be a Tuesday-market day- you will find whole hardware stores, haberdasheries, greengrocers' stalls, even a shoeshop spread out on the pa ve- ment. But the chances are six to one that you will find nothing and nobody around except a bronze soldier of 1914. He seems quite real Bareheaded, he looks sunburned. He is peering out over the lake, shading his eyes, as you, too, must do in the stunning glare. You see thè blue water and, across the lake, rising out of the blue mist, the snow-capped peaks of the Ital- ian Alps. Lenno is built on an inlet. About two miles up the shore to the northeast, you can see the Christmas-candy church of Tremezzo, horizontally striped in two shades of orange, and, across the lake from it, the town of Bellaglo. To the south, a low, wooded hill encloses the bay. Behind that hill rise snowy peaks. On the other side of the hill lies Isola That way, too, is the town of Como, and it is just as well to have no view of it. With its bevillaed hillsides, Como is a sort of rich man's Levlttown. In Lenno, people wash their dirty linen in public. They wash it in the lake, and they hang it out to dry upon iron-pipe rail- ings at the waterside. There is a law against offending possible tourists thIs way, and another against hanging bedclothes out the win- dows to sun. But there hangs the laun- '-' dry-everything stained n10re or less pink by repeated contact with red union suits-and out of ever) window hang bolsters, sheets, blankets, a counterpane, and a mattress. The women bv the shore wash kneeling on a little portable wood- en platform that stands half in the water and half out, scrubbing the clothes into a froth with big, stiff brushes, and ever) now and again giving some garn1ent a wet smack that echoes around the inlet and flings hovering gulls screaming into the air. Out on the lake, there may be one of the odd Como fishing hoats, as round as a walnut shell, wIth three great hoops for a canvas cover OVel the top, like the hoops of a covered wagon. The Como fishermen row standing up, in pairs, and as they do, the long oars SI- len tly dimple the surface in slow, stiff strides, like the legs of a water spider. .L larger boat, loaded with white cement sacks or long planks of clear, fresh pine, may be tied up at the broad flight of white stone steps leading up fro111 the water to Lenno's street, while its Cdp- tain, who is also the owner and the crew, sits sIpping wine at the outdoor table of the trattoria down the wa) . The bells of the old church by the shore wil1 ring before you've b en in Lenno very long. They go all day and all night, on no discoverable schedule. There are seven bells with seven differ- ent tones, ringing in chords. They ring the hour, and then, a lIttle later, they ring it again. Every once in a while, as if they had been humming to themselves, they burst in to a snatch of tuneless song. Down here in the lee of the mountains, every whisper echoes; the sound of the bells hounces back off the high snowcaps with a hard, celestial plangency. \Vhen you have driven for days on end, you want to stretch your legs, and so you start to walk around Lenno. Along the shore to the north, you get nowhere. At once, all becomes privato. To the south, things look more promising. You follow the shore and then climb above it, along the face of a wooded hill. You find violets, butter- cups, devil's-gdrlic, pink clover. And then you come to a tall iron gate across the road, with a sign, "L'Ingresso Vie- tatoo A ttenzionc ai C ani." The lan- guage is international. Turning back, you get a view of the town you have come from, and then of another town, on the slope behind it, above the road. It is as if the mountain had 1110ved. Before, it seemed to rise like a wal1 over you. Now there seems to be a valley or a slope above the rOdd, and another town, bigger than Lenno, u o HUGO J. ADA'-'S s:'O R ST ,.1 SENATO "Do you know who I am?))